Sennheiser MM-450 Noise Cancelling Headphones Review

Sennheiser MM-450 Noise Cancelling Headphones Review

Sennheiser MM-450 Noise Cancelling Headphones Review

About These Headphones:

Sennheiser has combined two worlds of headphones: wireless bluetooth headphones and noise-cancelling headphones. Having headphones that can do two things is neat, but do these two features fit well together?
There is a newer model, the $449 MM450 X. After evaluating the two, I didn’t see anything that seemed worthy of the MM450’s being nearly twice the price. The Sennheiser MM-450’s offer great value right now, as they are one of the cheapest noise-cancelling headphones out there (as well as being wireless!).

Features:

These MM-450’s offer great battery life considering that both noise cancellation and Bluetooth are both large battery drainers. It has 20 hours battery life when only using noise cancellation, 12 hours for Bluetooth, and 8 hours for when both Bluetooth and noise-cancellation are going at the same time.
The controls have a bit of a learning curve:
The central button will turn the music on and off. If you hold it longer, it will go into Bluetooth search mode (to connect to your music source). If you hold it even longer, it will turn the device on or off.
The Noisegard button will turn noise cancelling on/off, as well as activated a talk-through function where you can have a conversation (with a flight attendant, for example) without taking off your headphones.
Works with the iPhone, somewhat – when connected to the iPhone you can start/stop the music and toggle the volume, however you won’t be able to fast-forward.
Comes with a headphones cable (3.5mm), so you don’t need to be using Bluetooth all the time. Plugging in the headphone cable will automatically shut off Bluetooth, which is handy.
These are some of the smallest over-ear headphones around, which makes them ideal for travel (small package) as well as keep your ears from overheating too quickly.

Sound Quality:

There’s so many different modes (NC on, NC off, Bluetooth mode, connected with cable) I feel like I need to make a diagram with assessments for each mode.
In bluetooth mode, the music sounded quite clear and crisp. I had some trouble setting it up properly on my iPhone, but after setting it up properly, I didn’t notice a sound quality difference between bluetooth and plugged-in.
When noise-cancellation turned off, they sounded great…even a little better than when noise-cancellation was turned on. The headphones handle bass quite well, as well as having crisp highs. The noise-cancellation itself is quite good, considering these are on-ear headphones, not over-ear headphones. The noise-cancellation does what it’s prescribed to do. It blocked out plane noise quite well.

Conclusion

These are the most compact of the NC headphones on this list. They’re also the only bluetooth enabled, and come at a slightly cheaper price than the other headphones on this list. The sound isn’t quite as good as the Monster Beats or the AKG’s, but it offers many more listening modes and options.